The leaders hated one another. The captains of the Marais cried, "Down with the Mountaineers!" Their cavalry was few in numbers, and difficult to form. Puysaye writes: "A man who would cheerfully give me his two sons grows cool when I ask for one of his horses." Poles, pitchforks, scythes, muskets, old and new, poacher's knives, spits, iron-pointed cud-gels studded with nails,—such were their weapons. Some carried a cross made of two human bones. They rushed to the attack with shouts, springing up at once from all quarters,—from woods, hills, underbrush, and hollow roads,—ranging themselves in a circle, killing, exterminating, striking terror, and then disappearing. Whenever they passed a Republican town they cut down the liberty-pole, set it on fire, and forming in a circle, danced around it. All their activity was displayed by night. The rule of the Vendean is to be always unexpected. They would march fifteen leagues in utter silence, without so much as stirring a blade of grass. At night, their chiefs having determined in a council of war at what point the Republican posts were to be surprised the next day, they loaded their muskets, mumbled their prayers, and taking off their sabots, filed through the woods in long columns, barefoot across the heather and moss, noiseless, without uttering a sound or drawing a breath, like a procession of cats in the darkness.
[VI.]
THE SOUL OF THE EARTH PASSES INTO MAN.
The number of the rebels in the Vendée, including men, women, and children, cannot be estimated at less than five hundred thousand. Tuffin de la Rouarie states the sum total of the combatants to have been half a million.
The federalists helped them, and the Vendée had the Gironde on its side also. Lozère sent thirty thousand men into the Bocage. Eight departments formed a coalition: five in Brittany, three in Normandy. Évreux, who fraternized with Caen, was represented in the rebellion by Chaumont, its mayor, and Gardembas, a man of note. Buzot, Gorsas, and Barbaroux at Caen, Brissot at Moulins, Chassan at Lyons, Rabaut-Saint-Étienne at Nismes, Meillan and Duchâtel in Brittany, all fanned the flames of the furnace. There were two Vendées,—the great army fighting in the forests, and the smaller one carrying on the war in the bushes. And this marks the difference between Charette and Jean Chouan. The little Vendée was simple-minded and true; the great Vendée was corrupt. The little Vendée was the better of the two. The rank of Marquis, lieutenant-general of the king's armies, was bestowed upon Charette, and he received the grand cross of Saint-Louis. Jean Chouan remained Jean Chouan. Charette resembles a bandit, Jean Chouan is more like a paladin of old.
As to those magnanimous chiefs, Bonchamps, Lescure, La Rochejaquelein, they were mistaken; the great Catholic army was an insane attempt, upon whose heels disaster was sure to follow; imagine a crowd of peasants storming Paris, a coalition of villages besieging the Pantheon, a chorus of Christmas hymns and prayers striving to drown the Marseillaise, a cohort of rustics rushing upon a legion of enlightened minds. Mans and Savenay chastised this folly. The Vendée could not cross the Loire; that was a stride beyond its power. Civil war can make no conquests. Crossing the Rhine confirms the power of Cæsar and adds to that of Napoleon; crossing the Loire kills La Rochejaquelein. The genuine Vendée is the Vendée at home: there it is more than invulnerable; it is unconquerable. At home the Vendée is smuggler, laborer, soldier, shepherd, poacher, sharpshooter, goat-herd, bell-ringer, peasant, spy, assassin, sacristan, and wild beast.